Tag Archives: oil

Romania seizes Kazakhstan’s Kazmunaigas refinery

ALMATY, MAY 6 2016, (The Conway Bulletin) – Prosecutors in Romania ordered the seizure of the Petromidia refinery part-owned by a subsidiary of Kazakhstan’s Kazmunaigas as they re-opened an investigation into its privatisation in the 2000s.

The seizure of the refinery comes only a few days after China’s CEFC China Energy Company Limited completed a $680m deal to buy a 51% stake in KMG International, the Kazmunaigas subsidiary that owns the Petromidia refinery. Kazmunaigas has been looking to sell off assets and raise cash to help it through a sustained economic downturn.

Rompetrol was renamed KMG International in 2014, although the Rompetrol brand still lingers.

Romanian investigators have been focused on recovering cash they say is owed to it after a deal by the late Dinu Patriciu to buy the Petromidia refinery in 2003 from the state for $760m through Rompetrol, which he owned. He bought the Petromidia refinery from the government not with cash but with a bond.

In 2007, Patriciu sold Rompetrol and its daughter companies to Kazmunaigas for $1.6b.

When in 2010 Rompetrol’s bonds reached maturity, Kazmunaigas refused to pay the government the $600m coupon. Instead it gave the Romanian government a 45% stake in Rompetrol. This was reduced to 18% in 2014 after the Romanian government agreed to sell Kazakhstan a 27% stake for $200m.

KMG International said it had not been involved in any wrongdoing and that this legal case could damage its business plans in Romania.

“These are new developments which may have significant negative impact on KMG’s strategic objectives and development plans in Romania,” the press service said in a statement.

The company later also said it is also ready to take legal action.

“We will analyse the facts about the charges and to what extent such deeds justify the seizure of company assets. If we find that the seizure is not justified, we will challenge those seizures,” Gheorghe Albu, a lawyer for KMG International lawyer, said.

Petromidia is Romania’s largest refinery and is situated near Năvodari on the Black Sea coast.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 280, published on May 13 2016)

Iran swaps oil plans with Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan

MAY 9 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Iran’s deputy oil minister, Amir Hossein Zamaninia said his country plans to swap oil and gas with Russia, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan. Currently, Iran relies solely on Turkmen supplies for its northern provinces. In the past few years, Iran has signed short-term swaps with Kazakhstan and Russia. The new plan aims to turn these short-term deals into long-term agreements. Central Asian states, especially Kazakhstan, have been keen to pull Iran into their sphere of economic influence since most sanctions were lifted earlier this year.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 280, published on May 13 2016)

Italy’s Saipem wins $1.5b Azerbaijan’s Shah Deniz contract

MAY 3 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – A consortium led by Italian oil and gas service company Saipem won a $1.5b contract to transport and install a deepwater subsea production system for the second phase development of the Shah Deniz offshore gas field in Azerbaijan.

Shah Deniz, operated by BP, is central to Azerbaijan’s gas production. Once its second phase comes online, it will be the cornerstone of the so-called Southern Gas Corridor, a network of pipelines that will feed gas to Europe from the Caspian Sea.

Saipem’s management said the company will receive a fee of $1.3b from the overall deal.

“This award further strengthens Saipem’s key role in the construction of the Southern Gas Corridor where the company has a total of four contracts, in the upstream segment and in gas transportation infrastructure both onshore and offshore,” Stefano Cao, Saipem CEO, said in a statement.

Saipem, 30% owned by Eni, owns stakes in the other two companies in the consortium that won the contract – BOS Shelf and Star Gulf.

SOCAR, the Azerbaijani state energy company, owns 96% of BOS Shelf. Star Gulf owns the remaining 4%. Saipem owns 100% of Star Gulf.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 279, published on May 6 2016)

Kazakhstan-based Olisol makes Tethys deal

APRIL 29 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakhstan-based Olisol will inject 9.8m Canadian dollars ($7.6m) into Tethys Petroleum, a Guernsey based oil and gas company, triggering a new share issue. The long-negotiated agreement will bring Olisol’s ownership in Tethys to 42%. Shareholders will vote on the deal at the annual meeting at the end of May. Tethys operates in Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Georgia.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 279, published on May 6 2016)

Kazakhstan’s KMG EP and CEFC finalise JV

APRIL 30 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – State-owned KMG EP and China’s CEFC energy company finalised their earlier agreement to form a joint venture that will take over the business of KMG International, formerly Rompetrol. In December, CEFC bought a 51% stake in KMG International for $680m, KMG EP revealed this week.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 279, published on May 6 2016)

Azerbaijan’s oil exports drop

APRIL 26 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Oil exports from Azerbaijan’s state- owned energy company SOCAR shrank by 10% in 2015 compared to 2014. In 2015, SOCAR exported 22.1m tonnes of oil, out of total country exports of 35.2m tonnes. Its share of Azerbaijan’s oil exports also fell from 70% in 2014 to 63% last year.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 278, published on April 29 2016)

Wood wins Azerbaijan contract

APRIL 28 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Aberdeen-based oil and gas services company Wood Group said it had won a $500m contract to provide engineering, procurement and construction management services to eight BP offshore oil and gas facilities in Azerbaijan. The contract will last for five years, with the option to renew it for another four. Wood Group will service the Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli and the Shah Deniz Stage 1 projects, the largest oil and gas projects in the country.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 278, published on April 29 2016)

Kazakhstan based Nostrum announces Q1

APRIL 27 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakhstan-focused energy company Nostrum Oil & Gas posted a 30% drop in revenues for the first quarter of 2016 compared to last year because of sustained low oil prices. In Jan.-March 2016, Nostrum said revenues were $70m, down from $100m in 2015. Production was also down by 15% to 38,754 barrels of oil equivalent per day.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 278, published on April 29 2016)

Kazakhstan’s KMG EP revenues drop

APRIL 28 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakhstan’s state-owned energy company KMG EP said its revenues for Q1 2016 were nearly 50% lower in US dollar terms than in Q1 2015, highlighting the impact of the depreciation of the tenge on Kazakh businesses. KMG EP data is a good indicator of the overall health of Kazakhstan’s state owned energy company Kazmunaigas, a main driver of the Kazakh economy.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 278, published on April 29 2016)

Business comment: BTC fails to live up to hype

APRIL 29 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – In the early 2000s, the Baku-Tbilisi- Ceyhan (BTC) oil pipeline was hailed as a key component of the New Silk Road, designed by the West for the West. The dream might now be over.

Western oil producers wanted a pipeline that would pump Caspian oil to world markets without having to pass through Russia.

Everyone in Washington DC was excited. “Happiness is multiple pipelines” was the slogan that could be heard espoused by US diplomats and oil companies. It was even seen on bumper stickers around the US capital.

The 1b barrels/day dream pipeline was inaugurated in 2005 and relied on Azerbaijan’s largest oil fields as well as on Kazakh and Turkmen trans-Caspian shipments.

The decade-long excitement, however, seems to have hit a wall as Kazakh oil shipments have now faded away.

Experts don’t believe shipments will resume anytime soon. Tengizchevroil appears to have let its contract with BTC lapse. Kazakhstan’s Aktau port management has said it doesn’t foresee oil shipments from Tengiz resuming.

At a time of low oil prices and rising extraction prices, cutting expenditure on shipments of oil across the Caspian Sea was the obvious move for Kazakh producers.

Tengiz, and Kashagan whenever it comes online, will use the expanded Caspian Pipeline Consortium for future exports.

This choice will isolate Azerbaijan at a time when it is under the spotlight to become Europe’s new gas provider. The take-home from this story is that corporate interest, in the long run, overrides diplomatic objectives.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 278, published on April 29 2016)